Until that Day

Provers 13:12 "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."

We all know what it is like to hope for something; to hope for something beyond reason. The longing to see a long lost friend, to go on an adventure, to find joy through a dark season. We know these emotions. They exist in the liminal, a season of waiting if you will. How often though do we consider our whole lives to be this season? Do we realize that now can never be our home? Our home is tomorrow. Our souls know this. We feel glimpses of our home, but the reality is fundamentally foreign. I can dream. I can dream of a place where light breaks through the clouds, where the mountain range extends as far as the eye can see, where I delight in the ocean waves crashing over me. Why can we dream? Have you ever asked? It is because we are longing creatures. Why else would we study, explore, explain this and that. We want answers, and "the next one" won't do. There is a reality that embarrasses our conception of ontology itself. There is a place that is so vast that we will question even referring to it as "place." There is a King so glorious that no other posture but kneeling will depict our disposition. And we will we enjoy it! Oh how we will enjoy it. On this day  we will no longer hope because we do not need to. Our identity will be something completely new. Our previous title of "longing creatures" just won't do. Instead we will be "bearers of glory!" To share in Christ's glory is to be glory itself. I know no greater longing than for that day. Oh how silly we are to try to explain this. An eschatology will not do. I am failing even now to depict it. All we can know is that it will be completely different, for "now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known" (I Cor. 13:12).